Netflix To Hit UK & Ireland By Early In 2012

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Netflix, admittedly, has not been having a good run of things of late. Between service outages, price hikes, and moves that can really only be described as “bizarre”, the last couple months haven’t been easy ones for them. But they’ve had a few good content deals show up, and for folks out in the UK and Ireland, they’re about to get a big taste of sweet Netflix as Netflix makes the announcement that they’re looking to bring the service to the European countries in the early months of next year.

Though for you Brits and Irish hoping to get hands on a passel of DVDs, you’ll be out of luck here as the service is strictly streaming only, which means you’ll be getting access to around 20,000 titles at last report, more than quite a few others (Amazon, for example, is reportedly still around 12,000) but still only a shadow of the total.

This is clearly a big move for Netflix, who has been in an expansionist state of mind since their world tour kicked off with a Canadian stop, followed by a massive invasion of Latin America and the Caribbean. Now, with Europe in line, it seems very clear that Netflix wants to be streaming into homes and on mobile devices all over the planet.

It does make you wonder, though, if Netflix’s expansionist plans are the result of an interest in getting more customers or replacing the customers they’ve lost in recent days with their various missteps. Though they should do some pretty impressive business overseas, being as the competitor pool is somewhat on the light side, especially in the UK and Ireland which is at last report dominated by Lovefilm and its 1.7 million subscribers. But no matter the reason, more customers is more customers and that means more money, which is precisely what Netflix needs to recover its footing in streaming, especially with its big name vendor Starz, who at last report had pretty much abandoned Netflix.

So what do you guys think here? Expansion to get more resources and improve the service, or a desperation move geared toward fending off the growing pool of Netflix competitors? Either way, we want to know what you think about this, so head on down to the comments section and tell us what’s on your mind!